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It was a huge year for the business of sport, with Caitlin Clark and the WNBA leading the charge in a game-changing year for women’s basketball.
Photo by Charlie Neibergall /
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Bulls of the year
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It was a huge year for the business of sport, with Caitlin Clark and the WNBA leading the charge in a game-changing year for women’s basketball. She’s not alone but she is clearly the poster child for the new economic reality for women’s team sports. Clark is making everyone around her wealthier.
Explosive growth in media rights fees and overall revenues reaching the stage where several North American pro sports teams posted more than 30 per cent increases in franchise valuation, year-over-year. The television juggernaut that is the National Football League — which we’ve dubbed the new social network — closes out 2024 with an average franchise value of US$5.7 billion according to Forbes magazine. When your weakest links are still worth $4 billion and have grown by about 70 per cent since the pandemic, there’s no one to feel sorry for. That’s especially true when recent streaming deals will only drive more NFL revenue and audience in the years to come. Amazon Prime paid $100 million for the Black Friday stream last month while Netflix offered up $150 million for the NFL Christmas Day doubleheader that averaged 24 million, peaked at 27 million for a Beyonce half-time show and rallied more than 65 million unique viewers for at least part of the two games played on Wednesday of this week.
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